Amid all the rumours that Steve Jobs is getting sicker comes what I think is a much more interesting rumour: that Apple will launch a larger-format iPod Touch. Not that I don’t care about Steve-O and his health, of course — I do. But when it comes to Apple products, I’m really interested in the idea of a kind of wireless mini-tablet with the multi-touch interface (something Chris Messina and others have mused about in the past).
Journos vs. bloggers and other straw men
While I was doing my best to remain peaceful during the Christmas holidays, I couldn’t help but feel the blood rising after I read Paul Mulshine’s recent piece in the Wall Street Journal about bloggers and the future of journalism, which I found via a Twitter link from my friend Jay Rosen (who was responding to one from Salon founder Scott Rosenberg about the piece). As I read it, I had that sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach, the kind you get when you realize that an argument you thought had been settled years ago — and not just an argument, but a distorted and ultimately futile and unhelpful viewpoint — is still very much alive.
Mulshine’s piece (which is here) has the troll-ish headline “All I Wanted For Christmas Was A Newspaper,” and segues from a heart-warming anecdote about old-style reporters throwing copy out the window of the campaign bus into a discussion of how the Internet is “killing old-fashioned newspapers.” The passive-aggressive tone of the piece is somewhat understandable when you realize that Mulshine is an opinion columnist for the Newark Star-Ledger, a paper that recently laid off almost 50 per cent of its editorial staff. As a fellow journalist, I can sympathize with the writer’s desire to find a villain somewhere — but as Jay and a number of others have noted quite well since the piece appeared, focusing on the Web and bloggers is not only wrong, but dumb.
A Christmas interlude
I’m taking a bit of a personal break over the holidays, to spend some time with friends and family. In place of my usual insightful commentary, I offer you instead these peaceful images of the countryside around Buckhorn in rural Ontario, about two hours northeast of Toronto.
GateHouse: O hai, internetz — we r fail
With David Carr’s argument that newspapers should ignore the Web only a few days old — not to mention Joel Brinkley’s suggestion that anti-trust violations are a viable business model — I thought the market for stupid newspaper-related activity was pretty well saturated. But apparently I was wrong. It seems that GateHouse Media, which owns a number of regional papers in the U.S., is suing the New York Times for linking to its content. Yes, you read that correctly — it is suing to stop the NYT from linking.
Ignore the Web? Good luck with that
David Carr, a writer for the New York Times, is a pretty interesting guy — he kicked a cocaine habit and went on to become a respected journalist at one of the country’s top newspapers, something he just finished writing a book about. That’s the good news. The bad news is that a piece he wrote on Monday perpetuates all kinds of myths about the so-called competition between the Web and the printed newspaper business. For a guy who is supposed to be the Times media columnist, that’s not a great calling card — unless the only media you like to write about is the kind that lines the bird cage or is used to wrap fish and chips.
The Ingrams Christmas Letter for 2008
We started the year as we often do: by scraping the snow from the pond at our friends’ place near Buckhorn so we could skate and play “snow bocce” or “Javex curling,” which involves sliding old Javex bottles full of frozen water across the pond at a target. Soon to be an Olympic sport! We also did a fair bit of snowshoeing, played some pool, and ate a ton of great food — including my favourite, caviar pie (which is really just egg salad with caviar on top, with a fancy design). And then it was off on our annual trip to Ottawa for some skating on the canal and Beaver Tails and poutine and a nice soak in the hot tub.
Before too long it was time to head south — to Becky’s parents’ place near Venice, Florida where we swam in the pools and played on the beach and played some shuffleboard and enjoyed the sunsets on the beautiful white beach on Siesta Key, which is reportedly one of the best beaches in North America. We also took the kids to Busch Gardens up in Sarasota so they could see some animals and go on some rollercoasters and the carousel and see the birds in the bird sanctuary. Zoe also had a dual birthday with part of it in Florida at her grandparents’ place and part in our basement in Scarborough.
Continue reading “The Ingrams Christmas Letter for 2008”Facebook and the journalistic impulse
I came across a post in my news feeds on Friday, and didn’t think much of it at first. It was a post by a guy who writes about education at a blog called Square Peg, and it was about Facebook. I was in a hurry, so I moved on and figured I would go back to it. When I re-read it on the weekend, I thought it was fascinating — not so much because of what it’s about (a marketing group that hijacked some university Facebook groups) but because of how it has evolved over the past few days.
RIAA switches to “three strikes” approach
The Recording Industry Association of America, which has spent the past five years suing tens of thousands of individual file-sharers for copyright infringement, has apparently decided to change tactics, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal (hopefully this one is a little more reliable than the recent story about Google’s views on net neutrality). The good news is that they are going to stop suing 13-year-olds and retired war veterans and single mothers for downloading music. The bad news is that their new plan involves cutting sneaky backroom deals with Internet service providers to take a so-called “three strikes” approach: They let the ISP know when they think you’ve been sharing copyrighted material, and the provider agrees to send you an email warning; the second time, you get a letter; do it again and your Internet access gets cut off.
(read the rest of this post at GigaOm)
The TTC does the right thing
When I first heard about the YouTube rap video “I Get On The TTC,” which a couple of Toronto rappers recorded recently about the venerable — and much criticized — Toronto Transit Commission, I was really hoping that the TTC wouldn’t blow it by either ignoring or somehow trying to de-legitimize the video. I thought the fact that TTC commissioner Adam Giambrone is (as far as I can tell) about 19 years old might help them get with the “user-generated content” program, and for whatever reason it looks like that is in fact the case. According to a post at Torontoist, the duo got a call from Toronto officials, and wound up being honoured by Mayor David Miller and Giambrone, who played the video and even danced along, and then gave the two a free January Metropass. And some props are also due to Mayor Miller for the shout-out to “Spadina Bus,” the 1980s hit from The Shuffle Demons.
How the WSJ failed the Web 2.0 test
Traditional media outlets like the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times have begun to use some of the tools of social media — blogs, Facebook pages, even Twitter accounts. But they seem a lot less eager to adopt some of social media’s core principles, including a commitment to the two-way nature of the medium and all that it represents. This means a lot more than just talking about “the conversation” and how great it is to get links or comments. It’s about taking those comments seriously, responding to them regardless of whether they are positive or negative, and incorporating that approach into the way you do your job. It’s about looking at “journalism,” broadly-speaking, as a process rather than an artifact.